134 Comments

You do realise that vessel trackers are trivially easy to spoof?

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But it requires more and more people involved in keeping the secret if the plan is to "let's replace ship's autoresponder" etc. The simpler solution (no spoofing took place) doesn't have such problem.

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The simpler solution presumes that they didn't already have tech teams, which they would have needed in multiple steps of the operation, regardless of the perpetrators. So, it's not only plausible, it's most probable that a tracker was spoofed.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

At what point do you just admit the details don't line up? You're just inventing scenarios out of whole cloth. The whole story Sy published seems like an absurdly convoluted plan to do what is, in essence, a very trivial thing for the US Navy. To wit: blow up a pipe in 80 meters of water. The USN has remote submersibles that could easily blow up a pipeline.

I'm not suggesting the US didn't do it, but this story is bad spy fiction.

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There's nothing convoluted about it, you're just too accustomed to your 90 minute thrillers neatly packaged, that's why it all seems too daunting to you. Besides, nothing that is countered here is watertight either, in essence everyone is LARPing their own fiction.

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The satellite photos and AIS data seem a lot more watertight than Sy's claim about camouflaging the salinity.

Again, I'm not suggesting the USN didn't blow up the pipe, but, you want to believe this story and you're ignoring lots of red flags and going to extraordinary lengths to invent explanations.

Sy is full of shit here.

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There's nothing watertight about any of the data presented in this 'article'. And the fact that you're defending it only demonstrates how dishonest you are intellectually.

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Whereas trashing the entire story is the correct approach in your view. I don't have a problem with the discrepancies presentes because to me they don't invalidate the whole thing. So no, he's not full of shit and it really doesn't make a difference either, there's more coming.

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No they are not, and you're in classical conspiracy theory mode now: Moving the goal posts, after the initial argument has been debunked (or at least seriously called into question).

Keep in mind that according to Hersh, the entire point of conducting this alleged operation during BALTOPS was to serve as a cover and plausible deniability. So the question you should be asking is: Why WOULD they use an Alta-class and spoof the signal (which, again, is not "trivially easy"), when they could simply have used any other ship - one with much better accommodations for divers, perhaps - and simply not spoof a signal?

Your line of reasoning is logically unsound and you should feel bad. This part of Hersh's story simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

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Ha! They‘re scrapping it immediately after the crime to destroy the evidence!!1!!11!!!

No, honestly, thank you very much for researching that.

Hersh is completely discredited in this matter, I‘m afraid.

cheers, - kisch

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You people are so stupid.

Having some CIA asshole lie to Hersh doesn't mean Russia blew up their own infrastructure.

The US, or the British, OBVIOUSLY blew up the Nordstream pipeline. You don't need some intelligence twat to tell you the brain dead obvious. They wanted the pipeline gone, they swore it would not be allowed, they had the motive, and the ability.

This is so stupidly obvious, jokes are made about it.

https://rumble.com/v1pm5of-who-blew-up-nord-stream-pipelines-a-mystery.html

Our government is so incredibly full of shit, that people build CAREERS around pointing out their shit.

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Russia is the only party with motive to blow up NS:

https://genefrenkle.substack.com/p/putin-obviously-blew-up-nord-stream

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Russia just spent over 10 billion dollars to build the Nordstrom 2. They simply could have turned off the tap. They didn't have to blow it up.

Stop pretending to be stupid.

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Nuland declared NS2 “dead” in March 2022…and NS2 is operable as we speak and yet it is still “dead”!

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Nordstream II is NOT in operation.

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/87837

I can't believe you're this ignorant. You have to simply be trolling to waste my time.

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Nordstream II has never been in operation, nor had Germany any serious plans to turn it on as long as Putin remained in power after 2/24.

It does, however, remain *operational*. Which, as you might notice, is actually a different word.

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Sebastian Cremmington formerly went by the handle Gene Frenkel. Note how many times "he" plugs the latter's new Substack page.

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The word "only" is what gave you away.

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You think America or UK or Ukraine wants Putin to make tens of billions more in windfall profits?? Did you fry your brain huffing glue??

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Hindsight is 20/20, which goes on to show that those windfall profits eluded those brilliant western minds when they projected the opposite would happen as a result. Maybe you're under the impression that the US had been sanctioning Nord Stream 2 for the past years to create windfall profits? Yeah? No? Get a grip.

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NS2 is operable right now!! What type of glue do you huff?

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The Neicu ts always fail at what they attempt to do.

They are a 5th column that has been sabotaging the US for 3 decades

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Putin’s senseless invasion of Ukraine has been great for America—we are the Saudi Arabia of LNG and natural gas is very cheap right now. But Putin could have won had Hurricane Ian hit Louisiana.

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Gene Frenkle....LMAO. The guy graduated from a DNC Substack concern troll to a blogger I see?

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Taibbi apparently got Substack to ban him from commenting, I wonder what Taibbi fears??

https://genefrenkle.substack.com/p/matt-talibbani-wages-jihad-on-the

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If you really think Russia did it then you're beyond help and merely projecting.

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Keep on huffing glue..I don’t think the brain you have left is worth saving anyway. ;)

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I too read an interview and it seems Hersh or Hersh’s “source” concocted the narrative to fit quotes made by Biden and Nuland…and Hersh or his source weren’t aware that Nuland declared NS2 “dead” in March 2022.

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he may be discredited, but it wasn't Russia who blew up that pipeline

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

You appear to be very confident in your OSINT analysis of ship movements etc. If you don't believe the narrative proposed by Hersh, why don't you apply your sources and analysis to try and work out who was responsible? Which boats were in the area? Do you believe boats were involved at all? Many journalists and commentators have gone out of their way to debunk one journalist's account of what happened - but very few journalists have actually invested efforts in trying to determine who was responsible for the explosion. This should be a huge story. The Washington Post went so far as to interview numerous high level sources in Europe - but only came to the conclusion that it was likely a State actor and it's also likely it wasn't Russia. So who was responsible? If you don't believe it was the United States and/or Norway, as alleged by Hersh, then why don't you apply your analytical skills and sources to try and determine the truth?

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His documentation strongly suggests Seymour was operating on rumor not detailed evidence. Thanks for this followup report.

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That's not the only thing that doesn't add up in the article. It's sad that it was taken seriously at all.

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Well, this "debunk" article is not exactly sound. It's full of assumptions that, coincidentally, confirms the bias of an OSINT that has skin in the game, unlike Hersh who doesn't and has years of a pretty steady track record, not months.

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Feb 17, 2023·edited Feb 17, 2023

At what point do you just admit the details don't line up? You're just inventing scenarios out of whole cloth. The whole story Sy published seems like an absurdly convoluted plan to do what is, in essence, a very trivial thing for the US Navy. To wit: blow up a pipe in 80 meters of water. The USN has remote submersibles that could easily blow up a pipeline.

I'm not suggesting the US didn't do it, but this story is bad spy fiction.

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One of the dumbest takes from one of the stupidest people on Substack. More cowbell!

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That is a very good endorsement!! Have fun huffing glue, Huffy!

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simp some more for the mighty USA, LMAO

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The Hersh article is weak at best. Doomberg confirms this in the opening statement, and is of such dubious content no response is merited by a major news outlet.

The NY Times should have had more to say on the Nordstream story than I’ve seen; however, they are under no obligation to address the Hersh story. Not as flimsy as it is, and no matter how much anyone may want to believe it.

Hersh is a journalistic giant. Sure.

He should know too, the story would never be printed by a major media outlet because it’s all conjecture.

As was pointed out by Oliver Alexander, also a Substack contributor, the ship’s alleged to have been used in the mission were not even in service. There are many other unconfirmed assertions. It’s a shame to see such a reputation as Hersh’s adding unwarranted credibility to this story. A big story, but one not yet told.

More important, and much less conspiratorial, is the simple irrefutable fact that Europe, and Germany especially, were not going to be buying Russian energy for the remainder of our lives. It’s over. FSRU anybody.

The nukes (power plants) my yet have a future too, as per much more fact filled Doomberg essays.

Russia had plenty to gain by blowing up their own pipe. Let’s see what Putin does “in retaliation”. Of course, we’d rather not, but here we are.

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Is Jeff Stein currently employed by US spook agencies or has past associations with US spook agencies? Track record of Sy Hersh much better.

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Hersh has been making stuff up for decades to try and regain past glories. Totally discredited.

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Wouldn't it be possible to travel on a big ship on a training mission, then board a RIB without ais and travel to and from the diving point at higher speed, all while big ship stays on the training mission course?

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M350 Alta was photographed July 23, and then what? What evidence do you have that it was actually scrapped and not fixed-up for September?

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I find it comical you spend time debunking other journalists work specifically Seymour Hersh. This suggests to me that you’re threatened by his writings.

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With no tracking anymore on a ship scheduled to be scrapped, it can go anywhere and then be scrapped when its mission is finished.

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What claims exactly are refuted?

The AIS data shows the KNM Hinnøy being close to the site.

Close enough for divers with propulsion crafts (that would anyway be needed to carry the amount of explosives) to get to the site I believe (?)

Now lighter by the amount of explosives another small ship could have picked the divers back up later that day, no?

I don't know the range of the propulsion crafts put maybe they also just made it back to Bornholm where they would be picked up near the beach and rejoin another vessel.

This would at least how I would plan it if it needed to be stealth.

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How do you account for the Alta before 29th June 2022?

According to wikipedia Haakonsvern Naval Base is a military installation not open to the public. Even if the ship was decommissioned in 2012 it might have been brought back into service. So the question is: how spotty is the satellite image data in June, and is there a gap large enough?

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Good work. I hope the truth comes out. I think that was the idea behind the US once.

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KMN Hinnøy looks like it was plenty in close proximity, and as such had plenty of opportunities, to launch a smaller, non-tracked craft. That would very likely be the MO for such an operation.

Btw: This analysis made it all the way into a "fact finder" article by German state funded Tagesschau; https://www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/nord-stream-explosionen-hersh-101.html

They asked some German security expert about the Hersh claims, but had to use Google translate, from English to German. So they ended up asking the German expert about "plant shaped explosives", as if the C4 was shaped like sea plants to hide it.

Because Google translate ended up translating "plant shaped charges" with "explosives charges shaped like plants". The German "expert" didn't mind answering such a silly question about fake plants made from hundreds of KG of C4, which gets to show how much of an expert he must be.

It includes the usual cardinal sin of casually equating explosive powers of kilograms of TNT with kg of C4.

And the same old insistence how the measured seismic activity must have come from the explosion of bombs, and couldn't be the force of 100+ bar of pressure, inside the pipelines, explosively unloading after shaped charges punctured their structure, making them pop like balloons.

Which would also be consistent with the damage patterns on the few photos we've gotten.

Yet certain parties insist how it must have been huge explosions, by huge bombs, that were measured, and thus did it. The German "expert" things it must have been sea mines launched from the surface, not like that would be super obvious and leave a ton of evidence or anything like that.

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